Amy Gahran's news and musings on how we communicate in the online age.

Menu

Monthly Archives: April 2008

“When big-media Cassandras come to our conventions and prognosticate about the future of journalism being interactive & hyperlocal, we just grin because that’s what we’ve been doing. We’re doing more online, but the key thing is that people are engaged.”

“New startups are working on parsing out useful breaking news info from Twitter so that they can out-scoop existing citJ & mainstream news sites. Scoopler.com could kill the citizen journalism start-up scene pretty quickly.”

“WordPress users have a seemingly endless supply of themes to choose from, but not all the selections lend themselves to ad placement. There are, however, some kind souls out there who have made free themes for this very purpose.”

A post by Beth Kanter today introduced me to the work of videoblogger Rupert Howe, who recently emigrated from the UK to Canada. I checked out his videoblog, Twittervlog.tv, and saw that I’m not the only one who’s been having a passionate, torrid, heartbreaking affair with Nokia’s N-Series high-end phones.

Since Rupert just moved to North America (where Nokia’s service and support for its N Series phones may be slightly, um, more limited than what he’s been accustomed to in the UK), I left a comment to warn him about the situation here.

(NOTE: I originally posted this article on Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits. But I thought Contentious readers might be interested in it, too.)

Most of what I do is help journalists and news orgs wrap their brains around the Internet. Generally I enjoy that work. Lately, though, I’ve been getting quite aggravated at the close-minded and helpless attitudes I’m *still* encountering from too many journalists about how the media landscape is changing. Those attitudes are revealed by statements, decisions, actions, and inaction which belie assumptions such as:

The only journalism that counts is that done by mainstream news orgs, especially in print or broadcast form. Alternative, independent, online, collaborative, community, and other approaches to news are assumed to be inferior or even dangerous.

Priesthood syndrome: Traditional journalists are the sole source of news that can and should be trusted — which gives them a privileged and sacred role that society is ethically obligated to support.

Journalists and journalism cannot survive without traditional news orgs, which offer the only reliable, ethical, and credible support for a journalistic career.

Real journalists *only* do journalism. They don’t dirty their hands or distract themselves with business and business models, learning new tools, building community, finding new approaches to defining and covering news, etc. As Louisville Courier-Journal staffer Mark Schaver said just this morning on Twitter, “[Now] is not a good time [for journalists] if you don’t want your journalism values infected with marketing values.”

Journalistic status and authority demands aloofness. This leads to myriad problems such as believing you’re smarter than most people in your community; refusing to “compromise” yourself professionally by engaging in frank public conversation with your community; and using objectivity as an excuse to be uncaring, cynical, or disdainful.

Good journalism doesn’t change much. So if it is changing significantly, it must be dying. Which in turn means the world is in big trouble, and probably deserves what it will get.

There’s a common problem with all these assumptions: They directly cut off options from consideration. This severely limits the ability of journalists and journalism to adapt and thrive…

“While they are litigating, perhaps the Borings should consider suing Allegheny County’s Office of Property Assessments, which includes a photo of their home (which was built in 1916 and sits on 1.82 acres) on its web site. Here’s a screen grab. “

The “answer points” system for Apple’s user forums is an interesting incentive approach — but it’s really just about reputation building, you don’t actually win anything, get discounts, etc.
It should.

I’m sitting at the Las Vegas airport, hoping to get an earlier flight home on standby. They’ve got free and reasonably fast open wifi here, which is helpful.

But apparently some folks here aren’t too conscious about wifi security — they’ve left their laptops open to “sharing” (access by other computers on the network. I’m not kidding. Here’s what I’m seeing in my finder currently:

Not good, folks. Remember to check your system preferences and disable sharing before getting on any network (especially public wifi) where you’re not sure who’s there.

5/10, 18:00 GMT: “24 films will be broadcast during a 4-hour event from 6 locations worldwide in 7 languages to be viewed through internet, television or cellphones. Purpose: to encounter the lives of others and focus on what makes us similar.”

“Serendipity gives you broccoli as you search for chocolate. It turns out to be just right. It doesn’t require you to identify as a global citizen. Follow your interest in sumo wrestling and discover a debate abt Japanese identity and Asian politics.”

Based on the Unsuggester search results you can force expose yourself to other things that might otherwise pass quietly by you. The potential for new discoveries is actually much greater with negative suggestions than it ever will be with those that cater

If you must use a Captcha, use this one: “reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher.”

Quick video post from the Denver International Airport today. Thanks again to the folks at Nokia for raising on their own Conversations blog the issues related to Nokia USA’s inadequate service I’ve been talking about on Contentious.com. (See Nokia’s posts yesterday and today) . I appreciate their willingness to engage in a frank public conversation geared toward solving problems for their US customers

Across the US, many journalists (pro and amateur) and mobloggers could make great use of pro-quality, multifunctional reporting tools like the Nokia N95 and N82. However, right now, the very slow and limited service that Nokia USA offers — coupled with significant known flaws in Nokia’s clunky, Windows-only firmware update process (which can turn your phone into an unresponsive brick) — foists too much risk upon high-end US consumers.

Please join this conversation by commenting at Nokia’s blog and in their support forum. Let them know how they can make their US service good enough to warrant trust from would-be N95 and N82 users!